Money Ruined Our Marriage

Money Ruined Our Marriage

Posted By
O'Neil Wysocki

One blogger recently claimed that money was the root of all evil in the
cause of divorce. Although I disagree with him slightly — I believe
that a breakdown in communication between spouses is the root cause of
most divorces — communicating about money can certainly cause some
major problems in a marriage.

REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES If your household income and assets aren’t
what they once were, it can be a real problem for spouses who are not
living in the style to which they have become accustomed. You may have
thought that neither of you could possibly be the kind of person who would
feel this way, until you found yourself in the thick of it and were surprised
you were contemplating leaving the marriage. “Do they decide to
check out?” asked Ms. Wang, who is based in Palo Alto, Calif. “Because
if they decide to re-engage, it means readjusting expectations about what
married life is going to look like. Can they redefine a relationship that’s
not based around the lifestyle?”

Sadly, some people simply cannot.

YOUR MISTAKES When one person in the household is the chief financial officer,
there’s just one place to point the finger when things go wrong.
So in families where the price of the home has fallen, the adjustable-rate
mortgage is resetting to a higher payment and the retirement accounts
have fallen 25 percent from their peak, the resident money manager sometimes
comes under attack.

“If you go into debt, you may smack your head and say ‘How
could this have happened?’ and ‘You never told me we couldn’t
afford this big of a house,’” said Lili A. Vasileff, a financial
planner in Greenwich, Conn., who has taken to calling her work “marital
financial mediation.”

“But blame is not a Ping-Pong game,” she said. “This
often happens because they didn’t realize that they weren’t
making joint decisions.”

The solution is more transparency and conversations about assets, debts
and risk. But after years of letting the other grownup in the house make
the decisions, people get out of the habit of keeping up with the details.

YOUR PARENTS Some of the toughest financial problems that come up well
into a marriage are those that feel like a choice between your spouse
and another loved one.

Take an aging parent who needs specialized care but has run out of money
or can’t get the treatment that you and your siblings want to provide
without everyone spending a lot of their own money.

“Many couples find themselves in these situations ethically where
they feel like they have to do something” to help a family member
financially, said Jerry Gale, an associate professor of child and family
development at the University of Georgia, where he’s part of an
effort to integrate traditional therapy and financial planning. “But
if I do that, what is the cost to my own family?”

YOUR CHILDREN While the desire to do right by the children often keeps
couples together, the financial challenges that children pose can be formidable.

Ms. Vasileff, who is also the president of the Association of Divorce Financial
Planners, said this sometimes comes up with a third child whose parents
have bled the college savings dry paying for the first two children. “How
do we not deprive our youngest child of what our other children had because
we had more money then? Is that just life, that there is not enough left?”
she said. “That really strikes hard between the two spouses.”

Even if you manage to get the children educated, they may move home in
their 20s expecting their old room back. “It really comes to a boiling
point when a couple realizes that they have very different expectations
for what will happen when their kids reach the age of majority and how
their coming home could affect the couple’s postretirement years,”
Ms. Vasileff said.

YOUR UNCERTAINTY Most couples reckon with a sort of low-grade, long-term
economic uncertainty that comes when so many people around them are losing
their jobs. The stakes only get higher as you and your marriage age and
you have children or other large financial responsibilities.

Some people handle this better than others, but the pervasive anxiety that
often results can slowly wear down a couple.

It is possible, if you’re diligent early on and live below your means,
to plan around many of these issues. A larger-than-average emergency fund
can provide a better mental buffer against uncertainty. Starting early
with college savings or buying long-term care insurance for your parents
will help, too.

But few couples get everything right, which is why it’s a good idea
to stop every so often and reassess how you’ve arranged your finances.
Sometimes even the most basic practices deserve re-examination. Dan Icolari
and his wife, who live in the St. George section of Staten Island, have
been married for 46 years. But about 20 years ago, they realized that
their different approaches to money were the source of a lot of their
arguments.

“Rather than fighting, we decided to separate our bank accounts,”
he said. “Once we did it, it instantly affected every other part
of our relationship.”

Over the course of a long marriage, you’re bound to run up against
financial issues that you didn’t plan for. Or you may simply change
your mind about your goals and how money affects them.

“Step back from where you are, often in the heat of the emotions
or frustration or anger,” said Mr. Gale, the Georgia professor.
“I try to remind people to think about how they overcame stress
and challenges in the past. I think couples, when things get stressful,
it becomes ‘Here’s what I need to do or for you to do.’
But it’s really about what you can do together.”